I greatly admir eyour confidence in the certainty of numbers. However, I submit that the whole question of the container within the thing contained, if we were to ever sovle that mystery, would ALSO illuminate the question of why three is always 3, and why the five-ness of five APPEARS to be so replicable...not to mention more complex propositions lie 8,888 or the square root of pi (1.772453851, more or less).

If you can explain in-ness and out-ness and break the death-grip of "within" and "without" on our beleaguered psyches, I am sure you can also cut through the Gordian knot of the five-ness of 5 and so on.

My bill for setting you up for that will be in the mail, Rapaire!! And let me add that any person hypnotized into the belief that he is a dog, for example, can be made to bark as often as needed; reciting numbers simply reiterates the siren song of their hypnotic spell; it does not break the trance or penetrate their mystery.

Similarly asserting containment within the thing contained does not de-code the trance you are under, with your within-ness and withoutness.

Truly it is said: that which is within Tupperware, is not Tupperware. That which is outside of Tupperware, is not Tupperware. He who believeth in the difference between within and without is destined to wander forever from Tupperware to Tupperware.

The biggest starquake ever recorded resulted in oscillations in the X-ray emission from the shaking neutron star. Astronomers hope these oscillations will crack the mystery of what neutron stars are made of.

On December 27, 2004, several satellites and telescopes from around the world detected an explosion on the surface of SGR 1806-20, a neutron star 50,000 light years away. The resulting flash of energy -- which lasted only a tenth of a second -- released more energy than the Sun emits in 150,000 years.

Combing through data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a team of astronomers has identified oscillations in the X-ray emission of SGR 1806-20. These rapid fluctuations, which began 3 minutes after the starquake and trailed off 10 minutes later, had a frequency of 94.5 Hertz.

"This is near the frequency of the 22nd key of a piano, F sharp," said Tomaso Belloni from Italy's National Institute of Astrophysics.

Just as geologists study the Earth's interior using seismic waves after an earthquake, astrophysicists can use the X-ray oscillations to probe this distant neutron star.

"This explosion was akin to hitting the neutron star with a gigantic hammer, causing it to ring like a bell," said Richard Rothschild from the University of California, San Diego. "Now the question is: what does the frequency of the neutron star's oscillations -- the tone produced by the ringing bell -- mean?"

Neutron stars form when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel to burn. Under the weight of its own gravity, the star's core collapses into either a dense neutron star, or an even denser black hole.

The particles inside a neutron star are so tightly packed together that electrons are forced into the atomic nucleus, where they fuse with protons to make neutrons. This pure neutron material is so dense that a spoonful of it would weigh over a billion tons on Earth.

A neutron star with the mass of our Sun would only be 10 miles wide.

Neutron star "geology" is thought to involve a hard outer crust floating over a superfluid core. But the exact details are not known -- like whether the core contains exotic particles called strange quarks. Starquakes may provide the answer.

Now it's a musical thread. But seriously, folks...how would any of us have known that hitting the F# key on a piano would start a resonance with a remote neutron star? I always knew F# on mah 12-string was hard to play, but NOW I think I know why. It was a major karmic flinch, caused by a deep-seated unwillingness to resonate with neutron stars and contact any of those "strange" quarks.

I dunno about playing no F# on a stringed instrument, and don't know why, when the brasses are around, anyone would want to play strings anyway. But it's really easy on a trumpet -- between E and G, and hold down the second valve. It's pretty simple on a piano, too, even though it's a stringed instrument -- just press the key.

I think I'll de-tune my trumpet a bit and play that neutron star note really, really loud and see what happens. Kick up a little excitement, mebbe.

Yes, but what the physicists don't realize is that the F# note is not the tonic. It's the third. We're patiently awaiting emissions from other neutron stars in the frequency ranges of "D" and "A". When they arrive it will mean that the Universe has retuned itself to Open D. This works out quite well for playing Klein-bottleneck guitar.

My piano is so old that if it were tuned to "modern" specs many of the strings would break. So to find this star frequency at my house you'd have to hit A-flat. (I can't find an html symbol for flat, darnit!) My piano is tuned a whole note low. One of these days I have to restore it. (I could do G#, but that's too easy)

I have no idea what a Klein-bottleneck guitar sounds like, since true Klein bottles can only exist in four dimensions. Possibly something akin to the sound of one hand clapping, only with a lot more vibrato?

I dunno what good a thread like this would be if not for breaking with one damn tradition after another. So I'm a-gonna. The following is NOT BS.

The recent long series of intermittent collapses of the informational field called the Mudcat/MOAB has led me to realize the taste of mortality even in things that appear infinite, like this thread.

Now, me sainted mither taught me once, when a favorite poet friend of hers died unexpectedly, to say what you had to say to those you love while you still could, as you never knew when they would vanish.

So in case I never get another chance, let me just say here for the record that I really love all of you MOABites, down to the bone; even the strange quark-dog Gluon. But especially those of you who have been hurdling the hurdles and trying the tribulations of mortal day to day life and STILL finding time to contribute to the zany para-meta-trans-multi-personal nihilistic pantheistic terminally regenerative Megasolipsism that is this MOAB thing. You fill up my senses, one and all of yez. Thanks!!

Yeah, well, okay, that's easy for YOU to say. Personally, I might be insulted, perhaps, maybe, if I could figger out what you said. Something about pan-handled overt ovoid transduckalation, I think. Or maybe it was something els. Anyway, that same to you, buddy!

I have no idea what a Klein-bottleneck guitar sounds like, since true Klein bottles can only exist in four dimensions.

It clearly sounds like the great celestial bagpipes. The opening scale started the big bang, and the drones provide the cosmic background radiation. Now you know, whenever you see those pipers wandering off to tune up in a corner, they're actually starting pet universes, and not just the ones in their own heads....

Klein bottles exist in three dimensions (unless you count Time) that we are familiar with. For all we know, Klein bottles might (and probably do) exist in multiple dimensions. A line, for example, is simply the connection between two points, unless you view a line as a succession of points. In either case it defines one dimension -- but it also exists in our three-dimensional world, just as a Mobius Strip or a Klein bottle or a rainbow or tesseract. But if you were to fall into a Klein bottle....

A Klein Bottle is locally 2-dimensional ... every small patch follows the laws of 2-dimensional Euclidean geometry. In this sense, a Klein Bottle is a 2-dimensional manifold, and its inside is the same as its outside. But although it's a 2-D manifold, it can only exist in 4-dimensions!

Alas, our universe has only 3 spatial dimensions, so even Acme's dedicated engineers can't make a true Klein Bottle.

A photograph of a stapler is a 2-dimensional immersion of a 3-dimensional stapler. In the same way, our glass Klein Bottles are 3-D immersions of the 4-D Klein Bottle. Our Klein Bottle is a 3-dimensional photograph of a "true" Klein Bottle.

A Klein Bottle cannot be embedded in 3 dimensions, but you can immerse it in 3-D. (An immersion may have self-intersections; Embeddings have no self-intersections. Neither an embedding nor an immersion has folds or cusps.)

We represent a Klein Bottle in glass by stretching the neck of a bottle through its side and joining its end to a hole in the base. Except at the side-connection (the nexus), this properly shows the shape of a 4-D Klein Bottle. And except at the nexus, any small patch follows the laws of 2-dimensional Euclidean geometry.

Now I gotta go to DC tomorrow (George and Laura -- he's back on the bottle and...well, you know, disinterested friend of the family and all). But I'll be checking in now and then, so take care of Mom, ya hear?

Rapaire is just being snotty because you type tesserect instead or tesseract, MM. Pay him no mind. Making jokes about being friends of George and Laura is to me like making bomb jokes in a security checkpoint waiting line. ALmost as funny!

In other news, perhaps this is what we need to keep Mom from falling low:

A group of Stanford University students is developing a vibrating ankle brace designed to assist elderly people in avoiding falls.

The "smart" brace is fitted with a tiny chip that continuously monitors the position of the wearer's ankle, CNN said. If the chip detects a roll greater than normal, it vibrates, thereby sending a signal to the wearer's brain that they must change the position of their foot or shift their balance in order to avoid a fall.

'Course, any device that tries to be a substitute for TLC is doomed to hiccup, right?

The tesseract is also used as a network topology. Each edge of a tesseract is of the same length. When using tesseracts as the basis for a network topology to link multiple processors in parallel computing, the distance between two nodes is at most 4 and there are many different paths to allow weight balancing.

I am the Invisible MOABite. I have been here for more than two years but I have not been seen by any of my Fellow MOABites. I have decided to type something here with an indelible font. This will be proof to you that I do exist. I have passed gas a few times in the hope that some of you would notice and realize that there was an invisible MOABite in your presence, but none noticed. In the event that this attempt fails, I will pull out all stops. I will sit my naked ass in some wet paint and will then press my painted ass to my scanner and will produce a nice jpeg of my ass, which I will then e-mail to those of you who have been wise enough to publish your e-mail addresses on Mudcat. Thus, you will see and know that I am!

It's currently trying to rain outside - which oddly enough seems to have LOWERED the hunmidity and temperature - wish it would get it over with so that tomorrow can be nice and sunny and people will come by hordes to my ren-faire.

freds, I will help you anyway I can. By the way, a few moments ago, I didn't see an invisible man running by in a frenzy (in the general direction of away from you). Unfortunately, I am not a trained observer so I can't really say what he was/wasn't wearing. But the next time I don't see him, I will be sure to notice every detail.

Billy-Bob the Invisible Bonobo is easy to detect because he smells exactly like farts in an elevator. He is usually invisible, because he moves slightly faster than light itself and therefore is always pissing people off by not being where they see him. Most unsettling until you get used to it. But he's cute, when you can get him to holt still